Concept card History
Phylloxera and the replanting of France's vineyards
In one sentence
A tiny aphid-like insect from North America that feeds on the roots of the European vine and kills it; grafting was the answer.
From crisis to replanting
Vines are dying
Around 1865–1868, in large numbers, in the Rhône valley.
1868: the insect found
Planchon, Bazille and Sahut, on roots at Saint-Martin-de-Crau.
The remedies fall short
Carbon disulphide, flooding, sand: costly or too limited.
Grafting
Onto the roots of resistant American vines.
A rootstock for each soil
Riparia and rupestris, then berlandieri for limestone soils, after 1887.
Key points
- On the European vine, the insect multiplies on the roots and kills the plant within two or three years.
- It arrived on imported American vines, many of which resist it.
- It spread 12 to 15 km a year westwards; by 1878, the French vineyard was very largely infested.
- Grafting onto American rootstock saved the vineyard; it is now the rule almost everywhere.
- The insect has not gone: it still lives in vineyards, held in check by the rootstocks.
What it changes in the glass
- Grafted vines make the same wine, as trials at the time showed.
- In the Charentes, Folle Blanche and Colombard, weakened by grafting, gave way to Ugni Blanc.
Not to be confused with…
A direct-producer hybrid
A vine bred from crosses involving American species, grown ungrafted for its own grapes; a rootstock serves only as the root.
Powdery and downy mildew
Two diseases that also came from America, fought with sulphur and copper, not by grafting.
A grower plants ungrafted Chardonnay in a plot where phylloxera lives. What does this vine risk?
One question to test yourself: it does not count towards your progress.
An insect of many forms
Phylloxera, now named Daktulosphaira vitifoliae, lives on the leaves, where it forms galls, or on the roots. It reproduces mostly without males, several generations a month in warm weather, and its winged form is carried by the wind.
600
eggs or so, laid on the leaves by a single female
- In America, the local vines, with their thick outer layer, are hard to pierce: the insect multiplies little on them.
- It arrived with American vines imported by nurserymen looking for varieties resistant to powdery mildew.
A crisis in figures
2.5 million ha
of vines in France in 1875; 1.7 million were left by 1900
40,600 ha
in the Charentes around 1893, compared with 280,000 before the attack
- From 1879 to 1892, yields fell below half of normal.
- In 1893, national output climbed back to 50 million hectolitres, for the first time in fourteen years of heavy shortfall.
The remedies tried
- Carbon disulphide, injected into the soil: costly, dangerous, and not effective enough to defeat the insect.
- Flooding the vines in winter for about forty days: it needs flat land and a great deal of water.
- Sand: in soil that is at least 95% sand, the insect cannot move about. But such soils are rare.
- American vines planted as they are: their wine often has a "foxy" taste.
Grafting, and what it changed
Gaston Bazille made a first trial of grafting onto American roots as early as 1871. Grafting trials often failed at first: it took some thirty years of research to find rootstocks suited to the range of soils and climates.
- After the crisis, vineyards often moved down from the hillsides to the plains.
- Direct-producer hybrids, often "foxy" in taste, were banned from AOCs in 1951. They still covered 30% of French vineyards in 1958, under 1% today.
- Nearly 150 years on, the rootstocks' resistance still holds.
Related reading
Sources (5)
- Academic publicationLes « américanistes » du Languedoc (1868-1893)— Étude et Gestion des Sols (AFES), vol. 12, n° 2, p. 165-186
- Academic publicationDes vignes, des invasions et des résistances— INRAE — chapitre de « L'immunité des plantes », éditions Quae, 2021 (archive HAL hal-03206064)
- Other sourcePhylloxéra (extrait d'AgroMots)— INRA
- Official sourceCahier des charges de l'appellation d'origine contrôlée « Armagnac »— Ministère de l'agriculture et de la souveraineté alimentaire — Bulletin officiel (BO-AGRI)
- Official sourceCahier des charges de l'appellation d'origine contrôlée « Cognac » ou « Eau-de-vie de Cognac » ou « Eau-de-vie des Charentes »— Ministère de l'agriculture et de la souveraineté alimentaire — Bulletin officiel (BO-AGRI)